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“Through a glass darkly”: A digital exploration of an 18th century Revival...
Tuesday June 2 at 5:30 pm US central time Join us for a virtual seminar at the intersection of Methodist history and special collections hosted by Professor Ted Campbell of Southern Methodist...
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Compiling the dsh archive.
A strong coffee shared with Stella Halkyard before social distancing was implemented was how I was first introduced to the wonderful avant-garde poet, artist and Benedictine monk dom sylvester...
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Robert Wagstaffe Killer (Part 1)
‘As like a gentleman as is a Mouse to an Elephant’: The annotated 1794 Manchester trade directory of Robert Wagstaffe Killer (Part 1) Trade directories provide an invaluable primary source for social...
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Robert Wagstaffe Killer (Part 2)
This is the second of three blog posts by Julie Ramwell introducing a unique 18th-century trade directory with annotations by a Manchester surgeon. The first post focussed on the life of the surgeon,...
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Robert Wagstaffe Killer (Part 3)
Portrait of Robert Wagstaffe Killer. Reproduced courtesy of Chetham’s Library. This is third and final post by Julie Ramwell introducing a unique 18th-century trade directory with annotations by a...
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The Book Stops Here…or Tome Alone – Reading Room in Lockdown
The Reader Engagement Team feel immensely privileged to work in such a special environment, where we get to help readers every day and be surrounded by our wonderful special collections and...
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A Tale of Two Cities
The novelist and journalist Charles Dickens (1812-70) is most closely associated with London, the setting of most of his novels. However, he often travelled north, for both business and pleasure....
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White as Well-Water, Livid as Lead: Understanding Urine Collection Bite
A colourful billboard for our Collection Bite earlier this year, by the fantastic Caroline Hall (Visitor Engagement) Though many of us may feel a bit reticent about closely examining the subtleties of...
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The Rylands Brief, a new podcast series
In collaboration with the Centre for New Writing and the Creative Manchester project, for the last month or so I have been working on a podcast series called the Rylands Brief. The podcast showcases...
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Life in the unknown: Alfred Alsop’s slum stories
This is the second blog in our series on Manchester’s Wood Street Mission by Max Maxfield, History MA student at the University of Manchester. In this blog Max looks at how the Mission partly funded...
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A Novice Archivist and the Papers of R. H. Wilenski
Hannah Smith, a student from the Liverpool University Centre for Archive Studies, writes about her cataloguing placement at the John Rylands Library earlier this year. Hannah Smith, Liverpool archive...
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Revealing the Rylands: Making Sense of the Medieval
Through our social media channels, this week we are featuring images from our medieval European collections. Visitor Engagement Assistant Lee Brooks, who is also working towards a PhD in History at the...
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Album of Women’s Work in Wartime. (1914-1919)
Photographed by Arthur Reavil. Arthur Reavil’s photographic Album of Women’s Work in Wartime held at The John Rylands Library provides a fascinating insight into the working lives of women during the...
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Sign of the Times: the Sitters Books of Frank Salisbury – Part 1
In the first of two blog posts, Reader Services Assistants Ian Graham and Angela Petyt-Whittaker discuss their joint project to catalogue two unique and historically important autograph books… The...
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Materials of the Book – Parchment
Animal skins have been written and drawn on since the Ancient World, and methods to prepare them refined. Parchment and its highest quality form, vellum, are the culmination of that development....
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Materials of the Book – Leather
Leather is the preserved hide or skin of an animal. Any skin can be made into leather and species as diverse as deer, shark, dog and kangaroo have been used. It is a ubiquitous material found across...
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Materials of the Book – Wood
Wood has been used throughout history by human civilization, in such forms as fuel, shelter, transport, tools and decoration. It is renewable and versatile; strong but easily shaped by basic tools,...
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Materials of the Book – Papyrus
Papyrus was made as far back as the fourth millennium BCE, using the pith of the plant, Cyperus Papyrus. Due to the plant’s abundance across the Nile Delta, it was the principal writing material in...
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Materials of the Book – Paper
Paper was made in China as early as 200BC. The craft was passed along the Silk Road, through the Middle East and Europe, with paper mills appearing in Britain by the 15th century. Paper has had many...
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Introduction to Collection Care
The Collection Care team is a multi-skilled team of ten conservators from a range of backgrounds, who are ideally equipped to deal with the wide range of items we hold at the Library. So, how did we...
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